Oh sure, blame my sperm

Never fear, I am here to piss off the politically correct goodie two-shoes bunch once more with the help of a report about to be published in Intelligence. It’s a tough job but some one’s got to do and it is made easier when you start talking about people’s intelligence. I can just imagine gnashing of teeth that is bound to follow the report by Rosalind Arden of King’s College in London where she suggests that intelligence is actually under genetic control.

Along with a bunch of other researchers Ms Arden is looking for connections between intelligence, genetics and health. The current thinking is that general intelligence is measured using a value called Spearman’s g. This g value is correlated to the many aspects of a person’s health; up to and including lifespan. One of the explanations used for this is that intelligent people make better choices about how they conduct their lives.

What Ms. Arden and Geoffrey Miller; of the University of New Mexico, suggest is that it may be that intelligence is one manifestation of an underlying, genetically based healthiness

These biologists believe intelligence, as manifested in things like artistic and musical ability, is such a reliable indicator of underlying genetic fitness that it has been chosen by members of the opposite sex over the millennia. In the ensuing arms race to show off and get a mate it has been exaggerated in the way that a peacock’s tail is. This process of sexual selection, Dr Miller and his followers believe, is the reason people have become so brainy.

In order to test the theory Ms Arden used 425 cases where samples of sperm from unvasectomised men had been collected as a part of a different larger study. What she wanted to find out was if this g values would correlate with all three standard measures of sperm quality (number of sperm per cubic centimetre, total number of sperm in the ejaculate, sperm motility). Turns out they did

Moreover, neither age nor any obvious confounding variable that might have been a consequence of intelligent decisions about health (obesity, smoking, drinking and drug use) had any effect on the result. Brainy men, it seems, do have better sperm.

Guess this kind of give a whole new meaning to the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree or better yet the sins of the father shall be visited upon the sons. Gee .. thanks dad!.

I wonder if they’ll come up with a SIQ (spermal IQ) next?